Display Review

Reviewed by Dan Wickett on 5/24/2001
The Goldstones are at it again.  This book collecting couple has traipsed their way across the country again, hitting the New England area, New York, Chicago, Florida and Washington D.C. in their efforts to find books, stories, and interesting people to write about.  They are more successful this time than any other time in their writing lives.

Warmly Inscribed is reminiscent of their first, Used and Rare.  The stories are about the books, the quest for them, and the people involved.  They avoid the filler that cluttered their second collection, Slightly Chipped.  In that book, they frequently gave voluminous amounts of background information regarding the subjects of books they found.  If the reader didn’t have any interest in that particular topic, the book went by slowly and the Goldstone’s typical reader is buying their material for the hunt, the stories, not the background information.

They’ve found their mark again.  They hit on all aspects of the industry this time around.  The reader is treated to the Library of Congress, a local Florida library funded without taxes that puts other libraries to shame, book fairs in New York, Florida and Chicago.  In reading their work, one learns more about catalogues, autographed items, the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America), as well as the effect of the Internet on the industry.  

As the title suggests, the story the Goldstones concentrate on a little more than the others is that of the New England Forger, Kenneth Anderson.  This was an individual very interested in poetry, and that led to book collecting.  As he built his collection, he encountered money problems, leading to his forging author signatures.  His early attempts were more crude than at the end of his reign, but the most interesting aspect of the story is how various dealers dealt with the issue.  It was fairly well known what was going on prior to it being proven.  Some dealers let others know, some just quit buying from him but kept it to themselves, others are probably still pushing copies of the books they bought from him.  As you would expect, different people handle things in different manners.  It is for this reason that this story illuminates both the good aspects and negative aspects of the ABAA.

The Goldstones have not changed their style one bit from the first book through this one; if they think something negative about somebody they're writing about, they write it.  They do not appear worried at all that they will offend anybody.  They also drop in bits of information about each other and the rest of their family, which now includes their six year old, Emily, as they go in search of stories.  They stop just short of being annoying in this area.

Bibliophiles will love this book and the Goldstones write for them.  They drop book titles throughout as they are in stores or at fairs, expecting that the reader will know who wrote The Confederacy of Dunces, and why it is an exciting First Edition find.  You don’t need to be a book collector to find this interesting;  anybody who enjoys reading will enjoy the majority of the stories, but those of you who have stumbled onto a First Edition Family Man by Steve Yarbrough for under ten dollars will definitely appreciate the book a bit more.

4 Stars
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